This disclosure concerns an invention relating generally to generation of memorial items (such as casket displays, prayer cards, funeral programs/brochures, and the like), and more specifically to the use of standard home or office printing equipment to generate personalized memorial items having a professionally printed appearance.
In the funeral industry, there has been an increasing trend towards personalization of funeral services. As an example, prayer cardsxe2x80x94small cards bearing prayers, and comforting sayings and imagesxe2x80x94are often distributed to attendees of funeral services. At some point, funeral homes began to stamp or otherwise print the name of the deceased on these cards so that the prayer cards would be more meaningful to funeral attendees, and so that the cards might serve as a valued keepsake. At present, some funeral homes now offer personalized prayer cards, casket displays, funeral programs/brochures, and similar matter. Personalization may go no further than stamping the name of the deceased and his/her dates of birth and death on memorial items, but in some cases it can extend so far as to include professionally custom-printed images of the deceased (and images of important people, items, and events from his/her life); and/or extended passages of text regarding the deceased (such as an autobiography, or writings of the deceased, or press materials regarding the deceased).
However, generation of personalized memorial items can be problematic, particularly as the degree of personalization grows. The family of the deceased generally insists that any personalized memorial items be of high quality to avoid disrespect to the deceased""s memory. To obtain high quality, generation of the memorial items must almost invariably be contracted out by a funeral home to a professional printing house. The average funeral home is incapable of generating memorial items with the requisite quality because it is only equipped with standard office printing equipment, such as an inkjet or laser printer (and perhaps a color laser printer), and these generally cannot produce professional-looking materials. This is particularly true since most memorial items have unusual sizes which are too small or too large to be effectively fed through a standard printer (such as prayer cards, bookmarks, and casket displays); or they have unusual formats which are too thick or rigid to be fed through a standard printer (such as cardboard pocket folders, or displays and guest register covers made of foamboard or thick cardstock). Additionally, most standard printers cannot consistently generate professional-looking high-resolution prints, especially full-color prints, on many types of professional stock (such as laminated or polymer-coated cardstock, or on photo paper).
Sending the memorial items to an outside printing house leads to significant time and cost concerns. There is generally only a short amount of time between a death and a funeral, and while printing memorial items is generally a short-run project (since usually only a few hundred copies are needed at most), there are limited numbers of printing shops that provide immediate-need and short-run print jobs at affordable cost. There are a few printing concerns that cater heavily or exclusively to the funeral industry, but since there are only a few such concerns, most funeral homes must ship information and materials to these printing houses via express courier and hope that the memorial items are returned by express courier in time for the funeral. Naturally, if the memorial items are not returned in time, or if they do not arrive in the form-expected (since there is generally little or no time for review and approval of prototype memorial items), this can cause significant distress to the family of the deceasedxe2x80x94and significant trouble for the funeral director. It would therefore be useful to have available methods and apparata for generating personalized memorial items having a professionally-printed, high quality appearance, but which may be quickly and inexpensively generated on-site at a funeral home or the like.
The invention involves methods and systems, particularly software systems, which are intended to at least partially solve the aforementioned problems. To give the reader a basic understanding of some of the advantageous features of the invention, following is a brief summary of preferred versions of the invention. As this is merely a summary, it should be understood that more details regarding the preferred versions may be found in the Detailed Description set forth elsewhere in this document. The claims set forth at the end of this document then define the various versions of the invention in which exclusive rights are secured.
To generate a personalized memorial item, a user initially selects a memorial item to be personalized (for example, a casket display/photo panel, a memorial portrait, a cover for a funeral register, and so on). The memorial item is preferably mass produced, and is preprinted with some form of stock imagery (such as religious scenes, nature scenes, and the like) using high quality printing processes. However, the memorial item also preferably includes one or more memorial item print fields, discrete areas whereupon personalized printing is desired. The memorial item print fields may simply be areas which lack printing (i.e., the stock imagery is not printed on these areas), or they may instead be areas bearing markings defining the borders of the print fields.
Most of the foregoing memorial items cannot be personalized by simply having a user utilize a laser printer, inkjet printer, or other printing device to print in the memorial item print fields, since the memorial items are generally not provided in sizes or formats suitable for use in common printing devices. Thus, the user is preferably provided with stock display sheets, which are most preferably formed of adhesive label sheets having easily peelable/removable precut display sheet print fields. Such stock display sheets may be provided in different configurations wherein their display sheet print fields are sized and configured for installation atop corresponding memorial item print fields (in other words, the display sheet print fields may be peeled off of their display sheets and adhered atop the memorial item print fields having the same shapes/sizes). However, before placing the display sheet print fields on the memorial item print fields, the display sheet is first personalized by using a printing system, preferably one which is software driven, to print images and/or text related to the deceased within the display sheet print fields. The software preferably displays a working template containing one or more template print fields, each of which simulates the appearance of one of the display sheet print fields. The user may enter one or more images and/or text strings into selected template print fields (with such images and text relating to matters relevant to the deceased), and edit the images and text within the template print fields to have the desired appearance when they are later printed in the display sheet print fields. For example, a user could take an image of the deceased and center and/or resize it within a template print field, and thus within a corresponding later-printed display sheet print field.
When the user then prints the working template, the images and/or text strings within each of the template print fields is printed to a corresponding display sheet print field on the display sheet. The display sheet print fields are then personalized, and they may each be affixed to a corresponding memorial item print field on the memorial item. If the background color of the display sheet print field is coordinated with the background color (or average color) of the stock imagery surrounding the memorial item print field, the display sheet print field will visually xe2x80x9cmeld intoxe2x80x9d the memorial item when affixed thereon, thereby making it appear as if the image(s) and text on the display sheet print fields were printed directly on the memorial item print fields. Additionally, while one might expect that the display sheet print fieldsxe2x80x94which are generally printed on standard office printing equipment, with significantly lesser quality than the surrounding professionally-printed imagery of the memorial itemxe2x80x94would suffer from visibly deficient quality, it has been found that the usual effect is that the quality of the display sheet print fields has the impression of being improved by the combination, rather than the quality of the surrounding professionally-printed matter being degraded. The end result is that the personalized memorial item is granted a professionally manufactured appearance, as if it was generated by a professional printing concern, even though it was rapidly produced by standard office printing equipment at exceptionally low cost.
Further advantages, features, and objects of the invention will be apparent from the following detailed description of the invention in conjunction with the associated drawings.